The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has recently published a research paper ‘Smart Cities: background paper’, which looks at what smart cities mean and the opportunities that they present for UK economic growth. More specifically, though BIS also took the opportunity to do a talking heads session with some of Birmingham’s strategic leaders and this provides an opportunity to hear more about what Birmingham is doing to integrate a smart approach across its services. You can find out what they said here.
Birmingham Smart City 
Useful summary of why the government cares